


Bright Star

by eponymous_rose



Category: Doctor Who, Sarah Jane Adventures
Genre: 5000-10000 Words, Action/Adventure, Canon - TV, Drama, F/M, Friendship, Missing Scene, POV Third Person, Science Fiction, Time Travel, Weather
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 21:08:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eponymous_rose/pseuds/eponymous_rose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marshellian Paston's Fifteenth Theorem of Time Travel states that any two persons travelling through time are slightly more likely to meet from a probabilistic standpoint, within a margin of error described by a hypercube with complex dimensions; Ian, Barbara and Sarah Jane Smith give Marshellian Paston something to write home about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bright Star

_Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art-  
Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night  
And watching, with eternal lids apart,  
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite_

 

**Coal Hill School - 1963**

 

Ian Chesterton was not, generally speaking, prone to hallucination.

 

So when he noticed the swirling, heaving mass of light just above his lab bench, he marked it off as one too many nights spent listening to his tinny old radio and parsing through his students' valiant attempts at balancing chemical equations. It persisted; he amended his theory to include the possibility of bizarre refractions of light from the setting sun, coming through the half-opened windows at the end of the room.

 

And then a boy flickered into being right in front of him, and Ian, with a shout of astonishment, toppled right off his chair.

 

"Oh," said a voice, and a pair of trainers stepped into view. "I didn't mean to startle you."

 

Ian cleared his throat. "Er," he said, and got to his feet with as much nonchalance as he could muster. "Sorry. I'm afraid I didn't see you-"

 

The boy looked as though he were trying very hard to keep his solemn mien. "I should have-" He paused. "Well," he said. "I don't think it would have made much of a difference either way. You have calcite dust on your sleeve."

 

Ian blinked, and looked down to see a stripe of white. "Chalk?" he said, and brushed it away as best he could. "I see you've been studying your geology."

 

Bent over a series of test tubes, squinting at their contents, the boy seemed unaware he'd spoken. "My name's Luke," he said. "You're Mr. Chesterton, aren't you?"

 

Ian smiled, gave up dusting off his sleeve, and strode over to stand beside Luke at the lab bench. "That's right," he said. "Are you looking for your brother or sister? Most of the children have left already, but I could go and check."

 

Luke turned, frowning. "Not exactly," he said. "I have a message from you."

 

Raising an eyebrow, Ian crossed his arms. "A message? From who?"

 

"Whom," said Luke. "And it's from my mum. She says you're old friends."

 

Running a hand back through his hair, Ian racked his brains for a friend who might have a son who was fourteen, maybe fifteen years old. "Your mum?"

 

Luke smiled. "Sarah Jane Smith," he said, with all the flourish of a magician revealing an impossibly long handkerchief from his sleeve.

 

Ian stared at him blankly. "I'm sorry, but I don't think I know anyone by that name."

 

"Oh," said Luke, and went back to examining the test tubes. "I suppose that makes it a bit too early, then. It's a localized time-eddy, you know, a freak occurrence, and it looks like Mr. Smith's attempts at refining it to such a precise distance cuts down the temporal accuracy."

 

Ian felt a chill, similar to the one he got, sometimes, when Susan Foreman answered a question with utter nonsense, but nonsense that held such certainty, such _conviction_. "All right," he said, agreeably. "What was the message? It might jog my memory."

 

Luke glanced up at him. "She wanted me to say 'thank you'."

 

Ian realised he'd been holding his breath. "That's it?"

 

"That's it," said Luke. "She said she'd probably never see you or Miss Wright again, and she wanted you to know she was grateful."

 

"I'm afraid I still can't place her," said Ian, but he felt rooted to the spot, as though the words had some terrible, wonderful meaning. It felt rather a lot like reading Shakespeare for the first time, catching glimpses here and there of meaning, and a chill of something more, something brilliant and far beyond- "Why couldn't she tell me that herself?"

 

"It's complicated," said Luke. "I'm different; my molecules agreed more with the matter transfer than anyone else's, so Mum sent me as her delegate." He smiled. "She told me she'd explain it later, but I don't think she knows why it is."

 

Ian winced, rubbing his temples. "Well," he said, "maybe you could tell her she's very welcome, and that Miss Wright feels the same way, too. And if this Sarah Jane Smith decides against that whole idea of never seeing us again, she can explain it herself."

 

Luke gave a little shrug, then paused. "I guess you'll be seeing her pretty soon, anyway," he said, and straightened. "I haven't heard much about it - I mean, she hasn't told me the whole story yet - but I think you've got something extremely interesting waiting for you." And then he grinned, and it wasn't the shy, distracted smile or the secretive little smirk, but something bright and genuine. "You'll love it."

 

"Well," Ian said, a bit taken aback. "That's good, then, isn't it?"

 

"Usually," said Luke, and backed regretfully from the test tubes. "It's not all smiles, I think, but it's the sort of thing you can't leave behind. I think I have to leave."

 

"Now, just a minute. What-"

 

Ian blinked, then pinched the bridge of his nose; he had a terrible headache, all of a sudden, and he'd been very nearly certain that the boy had been standing behind the lab bench, but now there was nobody about-

 

As he made his way back to the papers he'd been marking, Ian noticed that the door to the lab room was ajar - he must have been miles away for a moment. Luke had probably slipped out, and he didn't much blame the boy; lack of sleep was starting to get to him, driving him round the bend.

 

He closed the door, sighed, and slumped back into the seat, but his headache was starting to lift. It still took him several tries to grasp the meaning of the convoluted answer Susan Foreman had managed to wedge into the space given to solve the problem, and even then he wasn't entirely sure he'd mastered it.

 

He was beginning to consider that perhaps marking the problem correct without a request for clarification might be the safest tack, when there was a quick rap on the door, and it opened. Turning, he half-expected Luke to have returned, but it was Barbara who strode in, business-like.

 

For a moment, he had the strangest urge to ask her if she knew a Sarah Jane Smith, but the headache was just threatening again, a blurring at the back of his vision. "Not gone yet?" he asked instead, rather stupidly.

 

She rolled her eyes. "Obviously not."

 

Ah, so she was in a bit of a mood, then. "Ask a silly question," he said, and she glanced up, catching the gentle rebuke in his tone.

 

"I'm sorry," she said, grinning.

 

He met her gaze for a second, smiled, and went back to totalling the sum on Susan's paper. "It's all right. I'll forgive you this time."

 

Barbara sighed and sat down across from him; it took some effort to pretend to be wholly involved in his marking. "Oh, I've had a terrible day," she said. "I don't know what to make of it."

 

"Oh?" He wondered what she'd say if he told her about Luke, and decided that she'd be most likely to tell him off for spending his nights marking papers instead of sleeping. "What's the trouble? Can I help?"

 

"Oh, it's one of the girls," said Barbara. "Susan Foreman."

 

He glanced up, and in that moment he had a flash of- of what? A thrill, a sudden shiver that went right to his very core, that brought to mind the boy, this mysterious Sarah Jane Smith, and everything opening up before him.

 

More things in heaven and earth.

 

_The moving waters at their priestlike task  
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores_

 

**Old London, England - 5063**

 

It was the times when they came so close - when the air smelled _right_ instead of sterile or sweet or alien - that it was most upsetting, this travelling without purpose or destination.

 

The Doctor had assured them, absently and with a wave of his hand, that it only looked like the twentieth century, that it was actually some sort of New Renaissance with exceptional historical records on its side and a population tired of fast-paced, electronic life. Susan had added something about an Information Age analogous to that of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and Ian had felt the familiar chill that came up whenever he contemplated his own future - it felt rather like cheating, like that old trope that came up in so many midnight reflections: what would he do if he knew the date, the time he would die?

 

(And what would he do, then, if his last day on Earth stretched forever and endless?)

 

It was a warm day, sticky and hot, unfamiliarly muggy, and the more Ian and Barbara strolled through streets lined with boutiques selling unidentifiable objects, the more the feeling of familiarity started to fade - this may as well have been any alien planet, dressed up to look ordinary. Susan and the Doctor had wandered off with a weak excuse about delicate diplomatic liaisons to be made; Ian was beginning to think the old man was just looking for an excuse to dump his unwanted passengers somewhere they wouldn't be too much bother.

 

That suited Ian down to the ground; he was beginning to wonder how long he'd be able to take the Doctor's officious self-superiority, anyway.

 

"It's awfully quiet," Barbara said, peering into the window of a shop selling clothing that didn't leave all that much to the imagination. "There's nobody about at all. Shouldn't it be busier?"

 

Ian cleared his throat, following her glance to a particularly revealing red dress. "Considering a new look?" he said, innocently, and she elbowed him rather harder than he felt was warranted. "What do you mean, shouldn't it be busier?" he added, adopting a hurt expression. "It's not as though we have a point of reference. For all we know, this is a ghost town."

 

"Funny sort of ghost town that has well-stocked shops," said a new voice, and Ian and Barbara exchanged glances before turning - in a situation like this, no matter how ordinary the surroundings, it was always prudent to expect the odd tentacular monstrosity lurking in the shadows.

 

It was something of a relief, then, to see a rather ordinary-looking young woman behind them, grinning broadly and clutching a peculiar bunch of machinery in her arms. "Hello," she said after a moment. "Fancy meeting you here."

 

Barbara recovered her powers of speech first. "I'm sorry; have we met?" She glanced to Ian for confirmation, but he was feeling strangely off-balance, as though he'd been expecting another stair and tripped himself up at the landing. "Ian?"

 

It must have been a dream, a hallucination, a misremembered moment, he thought, that time in the lab with the boy who'd come from nowhere. Funny, then, how he'd started paying attention to impossible things lately.

 

"Sarah Jane Smith?" he hazarded.

 

She beamed. "That's right."

 

But it couldn't be, not if she had a teenaged son-

 

"Oh," said Ian, and felt his newly pragmatic definition of logical thinking make short work of the issue. "And you're a time-traveller, too."

 

"Ian?" Barbara repeated. "I'm sorry, who is-"

 

Sarah blinked at them. "Then you haven't met me at all, yet. That's strange."

 

"You're telling me," Ian sighed. "I'm still wrapping my mind around all the tenses involved in this time-travelling business."

 

"You're- you're from our future, then?" Barbara asked, snapping out of her astonishment.

 

"In more ways than one," Sarah said, and her disarming grin faded slightly in the face of her disappointment. "Well, this is a fine reunion - here I'd been all ready to reminisce, and you're looking at me like I've lost my marbles."

 

Ian wasn't sure what to say to that; he glanced over to see Barbara uncharacteristically lost for words. Sarah cleared her throat and checked her wristwatch. "Anyway," she said. "I don't suppose the Doctor thought to leave you one of these?" She lifted the chunk of machinery that looked as though it had been hastily constructed from a bunch of odds and ends.

 

Barbara held up her hands. "Unless there's a more compact version I don't know about, it doesn't seem too likely."

 

Sarah scoffed and adjusted a few knobs on the strange little contraption. "That's right, trust him to forget the most important thing-"

 

"You know the Doctor?" Ian blurted, and immediately felt silly for asking - but a part of him wondered if there was a chance that there were other wandering time travellers abducting people right, left, and centre.

 

"Well," said Sarah, "I probably wouldn't have made it here of my own accord. There's a law, you know, somebody's law that says that because of some sort of probabilistic mumbo-jumbo time-travellers are more likely to run into each other than anyone else. The Doctor's tried to explain it to me a few times, but I think he forgets I'm not, well, him." Ian couldn't help grinning ruefully, and Barbara laughed. "There," Sarah said, "that should do it." She flipped a switch, and a row of important-looking lights started flashing. "I think you'll have to stand a bit nearer."

 

Ian blinked at Barbara, who shrugged and went over to stand next to Sarah. "Don't just hang around there gawping," she said, and he saw the enthusiasm in her eyes, and realised just how easy it had become to believe, to trust.

 

He winked at Sarah and wrapped an arm around Barbara's shoulders. "All right," he said. "Though I don't see what-"

 

A distant roar cut him off, like echoes of thunder growing nearer, louder. Sarah, her face screwed up in concentration, adjusted a few knobs and wrenched a wobbly lever into place - and suddenly, watching her assured but somewhat random tinkering, it became very easy to believe that she travelled with the Doctor.

 

"Here we go, then!" she called over the increasing volume, more reminiscent now of an aeroplane than thunder, and Ian hadn't realised he'd been tightening his grip on Barbara's shoulder until she cleared her throat and nudged him in the ribs.

 

His muttered apology died on his lips as he saw the source of the noise - a great wall of water, rearing up in cresting waves around the corner, rushing down the street towards them-

 

He started out of his daze and grabbed Barbara by the hand, ready to run - would the shop door be open? Would the shop itself provide enough protection against the-

 

She pulled him back so they were standing next to Sarah; Barbara's face was pale, but she shook her head, and a traitorous part of him, in the midst of all this, began to wonder just how much their time with the Aztecs had changed her - and Sarah was still fiddling with her contraption, and the water would be on them any second. With an effort, Ian stilled the trembling in his legs, the all-encompassing need to _run_, to flee, and closed his eyes.

 

"Hah!" crowed Sarah. "That's it!"

 

He opened his eyes in spite of himself, and before he could even register the approaching river, there was a flicker in his vision, a spark, and then a cascade of brilliance. Barbara gasped and he realised he'd stumbled back a step in surprise.

 

"Watch you don't step outside the barrier," Sarah cautioned, but her awed expression belied her casual tone.

 

Ian glanced back to see more of the shimmering, brilliant stuff behind him, and felt a twinge of panic.

 

"It's above us, too," Barbara noted.

 

Sarah laughed. "It would be, wouldn't it? I don't much fancy drowning in this box."

 

Ian took a deep breath, realised he couldn't hear the roaring of the water any more than he could see it through the glowing walls around them, and felt a sudden ringing in his ears at the recognition of silence. "You've set up some sort of-"

 

"Force field," Sarah supplied. "Yes, that's right. I thought you might appreciate not drowning."

 

"So we do," said Barbara, and Ian nodded dumbly.

 

"Oh, this is the really neat part," Sarah said with a grin.

 

The flickering brightness of the barrier around them had started to fade, and as the water beyond it came into view, Ian took an instinctive breath, and heard Barbara do the same. "Don't worry," said Sarah. "It's quite safe. I think."

 

"You really have been travelling with the Doctor," Barbara said with a weak grin, and Sarah smiled again.

 

The protective walls were now completely transparent, and Ian took a step closer to the barriers, watching the way the water rushed and eddied around them - the torrential force of the initial onslaught seemed to have abated in favour of a more gentle flow, but the water still would have risen to his chest.

 

"It's beautiful," said Barbara, and he noticed for the first time the way the brilliant sunlight flickered off the waves; the shining water wavered in his vision, and he took another deep breath, swiping quickly at his eyes. It wasn't London, not really, not this changed, but it was alien and perfect all the same.

 

"All the shops seem to be pulling through all right," he said, clearing his throat, and the moment was lost.

 

Sarah shrugged. "Must have some sort of waterproof siding or something. The Doctor said I could either try to break into one of these shops and find shelter, or just use this thing."

 

Ian turned to her, but she wouldn't quite meet his gaze. For the first time he realised how disconcerting it must be to have met them before - to have become friends in the past - and then to have them treat her with suspicion. He took some of the edge off his voice. "Sarah, what's happening here?"

 

She laughed. "They flood the Thames every year, now," she said. "Something to do with sea levels, according to the Doctor. Just abandon ship for a day and flood the whole place right out."

 

"The Doctor," gasped Barbara. "And Susan! I hope they're all right."

 

"They should be," said Sarah, and he recognised her guarded expression as one the Doctor sometimes adopted when he knew more about their situation, their future, than he was entirely comfortable disclosing. "They've sought higher ground. I expect they'll be worried sick about you two."

 

Ian couldn't help a doubtful snort. "Susan, yes, but I doubt the Doctor's going to be kept up nights."

 

"Ian," Barbara said, touching his arm. "You know he's not like that. Not anymore."

 

He sighed. "I know. I'm sorry. He's just a bit much to take, sometimes."

 

"Looks like the water's starting to clear out anyway," said Sarah with a smile. "I don't mind wading through a couple inches of muck; do you?"

 

Barbara cast a despairing glance down at her new shoes and trousers. Ian grinned. "Not at all," he said, and she elbowed him in the ribs again.

 

Nearly an hour passed in a pleasant meander through the sunny, silent streets - Sarah, somewhat more open than she had been, told them an improbable story about being trapped with a man who'd wanted to steal the Doctor's head, and they reiterated with one about travelling to the roof of the world, before she had to stop them and explain she'd heard it before. Eventually, following the distant sounds of voices, they managed to find the Doctor and Susan again, resting in a statue's long shadow after a long and fruitless hunt.

 

And once the jovial handshakes and hugs had finished, and Ian turned to introduce Sarah Jane Smith, she'd already disappeared.

 

_Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask  
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors_

 

**Militanos 43-delta, 13,408 B.C.**

 

"This," Barbara muttered through chattering teeth, "is a bit of a familiar situation."

 

Ian shuddered, drawing his cloak over his mouth and nose, feeling his breath form frost along the edges of it, wincing as he nearly turned an ankle on the rocky ground buried beneath a thin layer of snow. "Can you see Vicki?" he called, unwilling to dwell on what had happened the last time they'd been trapped in a storm - but though they were better-equipped to deal with the cold this time, he could feel the same lethargy spreading through his legs. He paused to stamp his feet, and felt his trousers, caked with snow from a few bad falls, cling to his thighs, cold and burning.

 

"I can't see either of them," Barbara said, her voice small on the rising wind. "I think we must have turned the wrong way at the pass."

 

Another gust brought a blinding burst of snow, and Ian turned away from the wind, feeling it hammer against his back. "Barbara, we need to stay together."

 

There was a silence as the wind howled again, and then it abated as suddenly as it had come, leaving Ian stumbling for balance. "Barbara?" he called again.

 

He turned into the last vestiges of the gust of wind, threw a hand up to protect his face as it flared again, and saw the dark shape against the ground. With a sigh of relief, he side-stepped towards her, keeping his back to the wind. "Barbara, you can't rest yet. We haven't got far to go, now."

 

His breath caught in his throat when she didn't answer, and he sped his pace, stumbling on the rocks, barking his knees as he fell next to her. "Barbara!"

 

He reached out to shake her shoulder, and pulled his hand back at the sight of blood on the snow. There was a gash on her forehead, and he realised she must have slipped on the rocks under the snow and fallen; her face was grey against the blood. "Barbara," he said again, and tugged off his glove to reach for a pulse. At first he could only feel his own racing heartbeat in his chilled fingers, but eventually he made out the reassurring pulse in tandem with his own - it was there, but he hadn't a clue how fast it actually was. Glancing up, trying to massage feeling back into his hand, he looked around for any sign of change in the scenery, the uniformity of white and grey.

 

He didn't feel as cold anymore, and the sudden roar in his ears was adrenaline, he knew, and the practical part of him recognised that he'd be done for as soon as the rush wore off, and that the safest thing to do was to keep moving.

 

"Doctor!" he bellowed. "Vicki!" The icy air stung in his lungs, and the only reply was the wind's renewed howling.

 

After that, time passed in a series of disconnected moments: he took off his gloves and used them to pad Barbara's hood, to protect her face from the cold, and kept his fingers on her pulse-line until they'd gone too numb to be of use. He called for Vicki and the Doctor again, until his voice was hoarse and his chest ached and he sank down into the snow, breathing hard and waiting for the pain to abate.

 

A hand touched his cheek, gentle, and he remembered Barbara and tried to rise, but there was a tightness in his chest where the pain had been, and he wanted to cough but couldn't for the life of him remember how. "They're alive," called a man.

 

"I told you - it all works out that way," said another voice, a woman's voice, and he wanted to ask about Barbara, but then the hand touched his and the pain was enough to send him back into blackness.

 

He had no concept of time passing, but when he opened his eyes again there was a brilliance above him that radiated warmth, and he thought he must have slept through the whole winter.

 

"I think you have the wrong blacksmith," he muttered, then realised he hadn't a clue what that meant.

 

"He's half-dreaming," called a voice from his side, but it wasn't Barbara's, it was- well, it was a bit Scouse, really, and he wasn't quite sure what to make of that. "Ian, wake up."

 

"Just let me finish this one, and you can have the rest," Ian mumbled stupidly, and tried to roll over.

 

A hand halted his progress, shook his shoulder. "Come on," said the voice again, and it was vaguely familiar, now. Ian opened his eyes and caught a confused glimpse of brown hair.

 

But not Barbara, no, she was-

 

Before he realised he'd done it, he'd sat up all at once, and his chest tightened with the movement.

 

"Steady on," called a man from across the room, which had started spinning in a way that was doing nothing to assuage Ian's sudden burst of panic.

 

"Where's Barbara?" he said, and his words came out fuzzy and slurred. "Barbara, she's-"

 

"She's fine," said the woman's voice, and now his eyes were focussing on a familiar face to match the familiar voice, and suddenly the name Sarah was running through Ian's mind, and it took him a moment to catch up with it.

 

"Sarah Jane Smith," he said incredulously, and slumped back, trying not to cough against the tightness in his chest.

 

She grinned. "Ian Chesterton. Saving your lives is getting to be something of a habit."

 

"So these are your friends after all, old girl?"

 

Sarah rolled her eyes in a long-suffering sort of way that made Ian grin despite his lingering worry. "Less of the 'old girl', Harry. This is Ian, that's Barbara, you're Harry, and everyone knows who I am."

 

With a bit more confidence, Ian rolled onto his side so the rest of the room became visible - he was lying on some sort of sofa in the middle of a firelit room, and for a terrifying moment he remembered Vasor's cabin, remembered barely escaping with their lives, and tensed.

 

Sarah frowned. "You are a bit jumpy, aren't you? How do your hands feel?"

 

"Fine, fine," said Ian, and finally caught sight of a small but functional cot set up in the opposite corner of the room. A man with curly dark hair was sitting on a chair at Barbara's side, taking the pulse in her wrist - there was a stethoscope hanging around his neck. "He's a doctor?" Ian said, hoping he didn't sound as dazed as he felt.

 

The man Sarah had introduced as Harry glanced up with a smile. "That's right," he said. "Not the Doctor, maybe, but _a_ doctor at the very least."

 

Sarah snorted. "Don't sell yourself short, Harry. Without you I'd have been tempted to stick my hands right in the fire instead of letting them warm up slowly."

 

It occurred to Ian that Sarah had probably asked about his hands for a reason, and he glanced down - they were bright red, a bit swollen, and strangely shiny. He rubbed them together experimentally; no pain, but a bit slippery.

 

Harry watched his hesitant movements. "Does it hurt? I can't remember where we found that salve - was it the planet with the blue things, Sarah?"

 

Sarah slumped into an armchair near the fire and grinned. "The blue things with polka-dots or the ones without?"

 

"Without," decided Harry. "Bally strange things they were, too - a few too many limbs and the most extraordinary impression we were gods of some sort." Sarah flushed at that, and he cleared his throat awkwardly. "Well, yes. Among other things. They told us this was good for treating frostbite, and the Doctor seemed inclined to trust them."

 

"It seems to have worked wonders," Ian said, and realised that the tense feeling in his chest had started to abate - the room's warmth was suffusing his limbs with a pleasant lethargy. "Where are we, anyway?"

 

Sarah shrugged. "The Doctor landed us here and dashed off to get something else finished," she said, and nodded towards the corner of the room.

 

Ian felt a strange chill at the sight of the police box in the corner, as though the reality of time travel, the sheer bizarreness of it had been lurking in the shadows, waiting to ambush him. He wondered just how many police boxes there were about, how many had another him inside, another Barbara, another Vicki-

 

"It's weird, isn't it," said Sarah with a sort of glee.

 

Ian stared at her. "Weird isn't the word I'd use," he sighed, and sat up, more slowly this time. "Your hair's shorter," he said, frowning. "It was longer in Old London."

 

"Old London?" Sarah blinked at him.

 

"The flood," said Ian, and when no recognition crossed her face, he rubbed his temples. "Oh, don't tell me. It hasn't happened yet for you."

 

"It's enough to give anyone a headache," Harry said sympathetically.

 

"Oh, Ian's just easily baffled," said Barbara, and they all jumped. Ian scrambled to his feet, wobbled precariously, and made his way over to her side; she was grinning at him, pale under the bandages wrapped round her forehead. "Hello," she said. "I think your habit of collecting head wounds is catching."

 

Ian smiled with as much energy as he could muster, but he was still relieved when Harry offered him his chair. He sank down with a sigh, absently took Barbara's hand in his own to check it for any residual signs of frostbite. "Of all the illustrious talents you might have picked up from me," he muttered.

 

She laughed outright at that, and Ian adopted a hurt expression, then looked up in time to catch Harry and Sarah exchanging a significant glance. Unaccountably flustered, he let Barbara's hand go and cleared his throat. "Anyway, look who's saved our lives again," he said, and felt the tickling sensation at the back of his mind that meant he was overlooking something-

 

"Wait." He turned to Sarah. "You said you hadn't been to Old London yet."

 

Sarah stared at him for a long moment, then burst into helpless giggles, which set Barbara off again, and soon Ian and Harry were laughing along at the sheer absurdity of the situation. After a long moment, Sarah wiped her eyes and grinned. "You mean I save your lives again, in the future? I should start charging!"

 

"Nick the Doctor's scarf and nobody'd know the difference," added Harry, and Ian laughed again though he felt he may have missed part of the joke.

 

When the new bout of giggles faded, Sarah spoke up. "How long have you two been travelling with the Doctor, anyway?"

 

Ian glanced to Barbara, who shrugged. "It must be more than a year," she said, and paused.

 

"More than a year," he breathed. "Do you realise, Barbara, if we get home we'll both still be a year older?"

 

"Don't worry," said Barbara, and patted his hand reassuringly. "You haven't lost your boyish charm just yet."

 

"Oh, that's very reassuring," Ian said over new peals of laugher.

 

He was never entirely sure how long they waited in that cabin for one Doctor or the other to happen across them, but Sarah ducked into the TARDIS for some food when they were hungry, and they had a wealth of stories to keep them occupied through the storm that showed no signs of abating.

 

Ian and Barbara told them all about meeting Marco Polo, and it wasn't until they'd finished their story that he remembered Sarah mentioning that she'd heard it before. He had the strangest feeling that it was all predetermined somehow, that all the Doctor's talk about not being able to change history was true, all of it, and that even the ripples they had made thus far on the universe were fading away.

 

And then Sarah and Harry told them about the bizarre Noah's Ark they'd discovered in space, about the human race sleeping and waiting to awake, about the brand-new start of everything, and Ian found himself thinking that maybe causality was overrated in the face of something that momentous.

 

Sometimes silences stretched awkwardly in the room - Barbara brought up the Daleks, but Harry and Sarah merely exchanged glances and remained mute on the subject. Once Sarah asked about the circumstances in which they'd last met, and Ian frowned at Barbara and admitted that he wasn't sure how much they could say - and then he couldn't shake the feeling that he may have just averted that meeting in the first place.

 

They all laughed, then, about the ridiculous logical quandaries that now made up their day-to-day lives, about the number of times they'd cheated death, about the beautiful things and wonders they'd seen. Barbara sat up after a time, to tumultuous applause, but she leaned her head on Ian's shoulder as time flew by.

 

Occasionally they discussed more ordinary things, people and places they all knew - it was a relief to find that these two weren't from a future that was too impossibly distant, in any case. Harry and Sarah knew who the Beatles were, but Sarah enthusiastically started humming a few bars of a totally unfamiliar song and they all erupted into laughter again.

 

It was after a comfortable and companionable silence had settled over the group once more that the sound of distant voices alerted them to the fact that the storm outside seemed to have settled.

 

"That sounds like the Doctor," said Barbara, shifting and stretching.

 

Ian yawned, and listened to the approaching shouts. "And that sounds like Vicki."

 

"You should probably head off, then," Harry called from where he was putting the kettle on in the cabin's small kitchen.

 

"Wouldn't want him to come in and see us and create a paradox," Sarah noted.

 

"I doubt he'd even notice you," Ian said, getting to his feet and pulling Barbara along with him. "He can be a bit-"

 

"I know," said Sarah quickly, grinning.

 

"All the same," Barbara said, "he might get a bit surprised at the sight of the police box in the corner."

 

"Ah," said Ian. "Right."

 

The voices were much closer now - he heard the exclamations as Vicki spotted the cabin. "Well," Barbara said, and smiled. "Until we meet again."

 

They shook hands and hugged like friends leaving after a dinner party, and Ian had to keep from laughing again at the absurdity of the whole situation.

 

"You go on first," said Ian to Barbara after a moment. "I won't be a minute." She cast him a confused glance, but shrugged and stepped outside into the ankle-deep snow, calling her greetings to the Doctor and Vicki.

 

Ian turned to Sarah. "I just have one question," he said. "And I know you probably shouldn't answer it, but I have to know." Sarah frowned, started to shake her head, but he pressed on: "Do we ever get home? Me and Barbara, I mean. If we don't ever make it, I just want to know, so we can stop hoping-"

 

Sarah glanced up and sighed. "Ian, I can't tell you those sorts of things. You know that."

 

He searched her face for any expression that might give her away, and sighed, smiling ruefully. "I suppose not," he said, and turned to go.

 

Her hand caught his sleeve. "I think you might be home already," she said, and nodded out to Barbara, who was hugging Vicki and permitting the Doctor to fuss over her bandaged forehead. "Don't let it pass you by because you think there's something better waiting."

 

Ian found himself smiling again, and turned away once more, for good this time, striding out into the snow, leaving solid footprints alongside Barbara's own in the clear, sparkling snow.

 

_No - yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,  
Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,  
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,  
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest_

 

**London, 1966**

 

Ian breathed in slowly, taking in the morning air whistling through the open window across the room, relishing the long-neglected sense of languor that had him sorely tempted to spend the entire day in bed.

 

He hadn't realised he'd spoken aloud until Barbara gave a sleepy murmur and nudged his shoulder. "It's not as though we have anything else to do," she pointed out, which wasn't entirely true - there was the issue of his interview with the University about becoming a part-time laboratory instructor, and Barbara had night-school papers to grade - but sounded just glorious in any case.

 

She leaned over him to check the time, then sighed and rested her head on his chest in a way that was beginning to do wonders for curing his lethargy. "We've only got an hour before I should drive you to the university," she said. "How's your elbow?"

 

He gave a huffy sigh that ruffled her hair. "My elbow," he said, with great dignity, "is fine."

 

She glanced up at him. "Are you sure? That was quite a tumble you took."

 

"It's a smaller bed than I remember," he said. She cast him a skeptical glance. "Well, it is! The one in the TARDIS was much bigger."

 

"Ah," said Barbara, and shifted so her body was flush against his, hot against his own warming skin, and suddenly he was quite convinced he could afford to be a few minutes late for the interview, if it came to that. "Because I was rather under the impression you were just a bit enthusiastic."

 

He had every intention of sounding commanding and powerful, but wound up squeaking something about manly prowess when she trailed her fingers up his side.

 

Grinning, she snatched at his arm. "Oh, you've a bit of a bruise on that elbow after all."

 

He pulled her down towards him with a suddenness that made her shriek and burst out laughing. "I expected better of you," he whispered, managing to keep his voice husky and appropriately dramatic despite the interesting direction her fingertips' meanderings had taken. "All women are the same, though: they finally get a man to open up, to give himself over unconditionally and then they're only interested in-" Ian sucked in a deep breath and only just caught himself from moaning. "Well, that too," he muttered hoarsely. "But primarily, they're only interested in my elbow."

 

"It's a lovely elbow," said Barbara politely.

 

"Thank you," Ian said. "But I have heard good things about certain other portions of my anatomy."

 

"Do tell," said Barbara, and he stopped worrying about much of anything after that.

 

The fact that she got him to his interview five minutes early was only the result of excessive determination, talent, and creativity on both their parts.

 

Barbara straightened his tie before he walked into the building, and they both paused for a moment, because it was exactly the sort of thing that ordinary couples did, not people who had lived through a chase across time and space by alien killing machines-

 

She laughed, and leaned in to kiss him.

 

"Hey! Get away from there, you two!"

 

They turned at the same moment, catching each other's startled glances at the familiar voice. A still more familiar girl was running towards them, waving her arms, and Ian was struck by how much younger she looked than the last time they'd met.

 

Barbara grabbed his arm, and together they ran with the unthinking determination brought on by years of adventure - Ian wondered whether they might have a shot at any short-distance running teams, whether-

 

The building behind them exploded in flames.

 

It took Ian some time to make sense of what had just happened, at which point the ringing in his ears had started to fade. His head was throbbing, and there were hands on his shoulders, shaking him.

 

"I'm all right," he muttered, then, as the shaking renewed its vigour, repeated himself a bit louder. "I'm all right!"

 

He straightened up slowly, wobbling on his feet until the world kindly stopped trying to buck him off. Barbara was saying something that looked quite important, her hand on his cheek, and all he could see was the trickle of blood on her forehead. "You're all right?" he said, and she smiled suddenly and pulled him into a hug. His hearing was starting to return, and he could hear the wail of distant sirens.

 

"That was a close one," called Sarah, striding over with a grin despite the impressive-looking streak of blood on her shoulder.

 

"That's right," said Barbara with a shaky laugh. "We were lucky to have you around, Sarah."

 

She blinked at them, then peered closer. "This is going to sound awfully silly," she said, "but do I know you?"

 

Ian and Barbara exchanged glances. "Probably," Ian said, and grinned. "I'm Ian, this is Barbara, and you're going to be seeing rather a lot of us."

 

"Give our love to the Doctor," added Barbara, and Sarah's confused expression evaporated.

 

"You travelled with him, too!" But before she could assail them with questions, a figure appeared from around the corner, clad in a strange velvet outfit, with a shock of white hair that appeared to have been blown in all directions by the explosion.

 

"Sarah!" he shouted, and waved a bundle of wires over his head. "I managed to disconnect the mechanism before it hit the main power grid - only this building. That's stopped the Martron-" He stopped short. "Sarah, you're hurt."

 

"Hm?" Sarah glanced down at the bloodied, torn sleeve of her shirt. "Oh," she said.

 

The man seemed completely oblivious of Ian and Barbara, examining Sarah's arm with a practised deftness.

 

"Come on," murmured Ian. "This is probably our cue to leave."

 

They moved away just as the fire trucks roared into sight, and Barbara noted that they'd do well to keep off the beaten path if they didn't want to attract attention, bruised and battered as they were.

 

"I didn't expect to have something like that happen again," Ian murmured as they slipped down a side street. "I mean, not really. Not after all that, another little adventure."

 

"Yes," said Barbara. "But do you know what?"

 

He turned to her. "What?"

 

"I think we might just have a few adventures of our own in store," she said, and linked her arm in his. Together they strode down the street in their bloodied and torn clothing, an ordinary sort of couple with extraordinary stories to tell.

 

_Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,  
And so live ever-_

 

**London**

 

Sarah's staring down at the identification card in her hand, going over the directions in her mind, because stopping to ask for the location of a top-secret research complex would likely earn her a few strange looks. She's fairly sure it's near enough to walk, anyway.

 

"Hello," she says to a tree. "My name is Lavinia Smith."

 

It sounds convincing enough; the tree appears to have bought the story, anyway. "World-renowned virologist," Sarah murmurs, and scowls at the cliché. "Eminent- no, that's worse. Well-respected? Brilliant, maybe. Simple is best and all."

 

"Pretty," chirps a small voice, and she turns to see a little boy, four or five years old, trailing after her, beaming.

 

"Well," she says. "Thank you, but I don't think my editors will appreciate the self-congratulations."

 

A man, dark-haired and dressed in a smart-looking blazer, strides up behind the boy, tousles his hair. "Sorry about that," he says, grinning. "John's a bit of a charmer already."

 

"Takes after his father," adds a woman who can only be the man's wife. She's wearing trousers and a confident, cheerful expression, and Sarah likes her immediately.

 

"He's a darling," she says, crouching down to smile at the boy. "And how old are you, then?"

 

The little boy shuffles back a step, shyly, but says, in a clear, distinct voice, "Time's relative, you know."

 

"Ah," says Sarah, blinking, and stands. "Clever, that one."

 

The couple is smiling at her now with a strange familiarity, and she nearly asks if they've met before, but a quick glance at her watch reveals that she's very near to being late. "Sorry," she says. "Must dash."

 

And before she can move, the man says: "Sarah Jane Smith."

 

She blinks at him. "What?"

 

"I think," he says, "you've got something extremely interesting waiting for you."

 

"How did you-" she says, and pauses. Probably stark raving mad, the lot of them - serves her right for gabbing in the street when she has a story to pursue! "I've really got to go."

 

And as she strides away, she hears the little boy ask his parents who the pretty lady was.

 

"An old friend," says the woman.

 

Sarah's heard that the human mind can only process a finite number of concepts at once - add one too many, and another will drop out of conscious recollection.

 

She thinks about having to get back into character, about acting older than she looks, about explaining everything to her Aunt Lavinia in time, about the mysterious organisation that her sources say are behind the scenes of this bizarre research project, the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce.

 

She thinks about the people she'll be meeting, the ones she's supposed to recognise from academic talks and conferences, and the ones who won't even know she exists. There's a scientific advisor from UNIT on board, she's been told, a Doctor something-or-other, and, after all the rumours she's managed to glean, she's quite keen on meeting him.

 

As Sarah walks into the brightening day, preparing herself to become somebody else, the matter of the child and his strange parents gradually slips from her memory.

 

But memory, as time, can work both ways.


End file.
